Coal

It’s a very good thing that neural tube defects are relatively rare in the U.S., because they are very cruel conditions for a newborn to suffer. The two most common types of such birth defects are spina bifida – in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close properly — and anencephaly, in which a large portion of the brain …

If Congress had the wherewithal to establish a robust energy and climate change policy, there might have been a transformative bit of construction underway right now, next to the towering Mountaineer coal power plant, in New Haven, West Va. Mountaineer, like nearly every other coal plant in the world, pours tons of carbon into the …

So Fyodor Dostoevskywrote of his years of hard labor in 19th century Siberia, after a jittery Tsar Nicholas I banished the famed writer to the lonely Far East. For centuries, the massive swath of land east of Moscow and north of China has been a place of political …

When I lived in Hong Kong, I used to travel across the border into the People’s Republic, mostly for stories—like this one about the sex toy king of China—or for simple travel. (Particularly memorable were the all-night raves on the Great Wall of China which, sadly, have since been banned.) When I’d flip through my photos after I …

Tritium is one of those elements that just sounds bad. There’s something about the name that simply feels radioactive even before you know what the stuff is. That’s one of the reasons people have been so spooked by a new investigation the Associated Press conducted of Nuclear Regulatory Commission records, revealing that tritium has …

It’s not likely that a book called Harry Potter and the Mountaintop Removal Project would have much appeal to middle-schoolers. And have fun trying to get the pre-K crowd interested in Clifford the Big Red Strip-Mine Operator. The good news is you’re never likely to see such literary nasties. The bad news is that Scholastic, …

The Earth as one great organism has always been one of the most appealing metaphors of the green movement. From the moment environmentalist James Lovelock first articulated his so-called Gaia hypothesis—after the Greek goddess of the Earth—in the 1970s, the theory has continued to charm environmentalists.

Yesterday Tom Fanning, the CEO of the majority coal-powered utility Southern Company, made a few headlines when he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a speech that the Obama administration has “virtually declared war on coal,” continuing:

The existing coal industry is under attack by some in America. Decisions are being made today

Want to save the Earth? Easy, just buy a couple of ice trays. To the long list of human inventions that are wrecking global climate—the internal combustion engine, the industrial era factory—add the automatic ice maker.

Climate modelers have long known that households are far bigger contributors to global warming than most …

In a decision that could have a major impact on both the mining industry and the Obama Administration’s relationship with conservatives, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it was vetoing the largest single mountaintop mining removal permit in West Virginia history. In using its authority under the Clean Water …